Michael L. Lomax

Michael L. Lomax

"As president and chief executive officer of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF), Dr. Michael L. Lomax heads the nation's largest and most successful minority higher education assistance organization... In the course of its 62-year history, UNCF has raised and distributed over $2.5 billion and has assisted over 300,000 students in earning undergraduate degrees. In 1999, UNCF received over $1 billion, the largest private gift to American higher education, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to administer the Gates Millennium Scholars Program, which provides outstanding minority students with an opportunity to complete their undergraduate and graduate college educations.

"Dr. Lomax joined UNCF after serving in a series of high-level academic and political positions. Immediately before joining UNCF, he served seven years as president of Dillard University in New Orleans. During his presidency, Dillard moved into the top tier of comprehensive colleges ranked by U.S. News and World Report and increased its enrollment by nearly 70 percent, doubled its assets, tripled its annual philanthropic revenues, and undertook and completed a major campus construction and modernization program.

"Dr. Lomax went to Dillard after thirty years in Atlanta, where he pursued simultaneous full-time careers as a university professor and public servant. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Atlanta's Morehouse College (the alma mater of Dr. Martin Luther King) and, after receiving his M.A. degree from Columbia University and his Ph.D. in American and African American literature from Emory University, taught literature at Morehouse and Spelman Colleges and the University of Georgia...

"Dr. Lomax is a trustee of Emory University, a member of the founding Council of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African American History and Culture, and a member of the Boards of Directors of Teach for America, The KIPP Foundation, The Carter Center, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Studio Museum in Harlem, The Bill T. Jones Dance Company and the National Black Arts Festival, of which he was founding chair. President George W. Bush appointed him to the President’s Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He has also received numerous awards including The Laurel Crowned Circle Award from Omicron Delta Kappa (2006), the distinguished Emory Medal and the Candle in the Dark award from Morehouse College. Dr. Lomax has received numerous honorary degrees from institutions, including Allen University, Florida Memorial University, Livingstone College, Tuskegee University, University of Vermont, and Virginia Union University.

"Dr. Lomax and his wife, Cheryl Ferguson Lomax, have two daughters, Michele and Rachel. His oldest daughter, Deignan, graduated from Dillard University in 2000." 


 * Director, New Profit